ABSTRACT
The failure to draw a distinction between the particular moral code of a community, i.e. its social customs and conventions, and general moral principles of an abstract nature has caused a lot of needless confusion in ethical thinking. In this chapter, the term ‘Ethics’ refers exclusively to general principles and not to customary rules. It emphasizes the distinction that holds between them, for what is true of general moral principles is not necessarily true of customary rules, although these latter are also known as moral principles. A principle of morals is formulated in recognition of the fact that some people do actually act in some characteristic ways in situations of a certain sort and also of the fact that we do feel and think about such actions in a characteristic way. The theoretical study called Ethics deals not with the particular judgments but the conceptions of standards involved in these judgments, and their implications.
